Unofficial news and tips about Google

June 24, 2006

Top 10 Tech News Sources

Where do you read the latest tech news? Would you like to see other kinds of news than the rest of the people? I compiled a list of 10 sites where you can find the best news about technology and more.

10. TailrankTailrank monitors blogs to find the most popular posts. For each subject, it shows the most probable source of the news and other blogs that talk about the same subject. Tailrank ranks news by the number of backlinks, which isn't necessarily the best decision.

Today's most important news on Tailrank is "How to tune into BlogerCon" (BlogerCon is a conference about weblogs).

Tailrank also has a politics section, a mobile version, an API and a personalization feature.

9. SpotbackSpotback lets you personalize the news by rating them. You can save the stories, see news from a restricted number of domains. Spotback lets you view the text of the news inline, so you don't have to go to the source if you don't find the news interesting. "Spotback uses sophisticated algorithms that analyze social behavior. These algorithms are designed to harness the power of the entire community for the benefit of the individual user." Unfortunately, the selection of the news is not very good, but it improves over time.

8. FindoryGreg Linden's Findory personalizes the news by looking at the headlines you click on. If you click on a headline or make search, Findory adjusts the news to let you see only relevant content. You can also view the latest posts from your favorite blog and read related posts from other blogs. Unfortunately, you'll see blog posts from last year, as well as low-quality articles.

Findory has many other categories, has sections for videos and podcasts and shows the neighborhood of a blog.

7. Google NewsGoogle News lets you personalize the news, but tends to show mostly news from newspapers and not from blogs. You can get alerts by mail if something interesting happens in a certain domain. The subject grouping doesn't work very good, so you'll sometimes the same subject in many places.

6. RojoRojo is a feed reader that tracks the most read posts and lets you vote for them. You can also tag stories and save them to your account.

Today's most important post on Rojo: "Firefox cheat sheet".

5. Del.icio.usView the most bookmarked posts today. Most posts have already been on Digg, Slashdot or other popular sites and that's the reason for the sudden popularity.

4. BlogsnowBlogsnow is based purely on link tracking, it's not only about technology, doesn't have any personalization features, but it's clean, fast and accurate.

3. TechmemeTechmeme has a similar approach to Tailrank, but does a better ranking of the news. It shows less news and lets you view the archives.

Today's most important new on Techmeme is "Verizon to end service on commercial airplanes".

2. DiggDigg is like Techmeme, except that articles are manually submitted, and instead of links we have votes. Another difference is that Digg can have on its front page news like "Top 10 strangest gadgets of the past" and tends to be sensationalist and shallow. Breaking news reach fast to the homepage, so Digg is probably the best place to find the latest news.

1. SlashdotDigg's older relative, Slashdot is the place to see great comments on the most interesting news of the day, usually a couple of hours after you read the news on Digg. Slashdot is like a great talk-show broadcasted one or two hours after the breaking news report. So you'll not be the first to find the news, but you'll learn a lot from the discussion.

0. PopurlsIf you don't have time to go to all these sites, or read their feeds, Popurls shows you the latest news from Slashdot, Digg, Google News, Del.icio.us and other sites.